porcelain accent

Senior Member

Concerning a Channel 4 TV series on royalty and Mrs Wallis Simpson, Alison Graham writes in the RadioTimes : « Using contemporary footage and newsreels (always hilarious because of the porcelain accents), historians piece together the run up to a seismic constitutional crisis. »

I cannot find the exact meaning of « porcelain accents » which describes that announcer English. Is it just an emphatic and overly articulate accent (probably needed for the microphones of the time) ?

Senior Member

Oddly, I can't recall coming across the phrase 'porcelain accents' before - but I'm sure it means the same as a 'cut-glass accent' - a long-established way of referring to what otherwise is known as 'R(eceived) P(ronunciation' or 'Queen's English'. Whilst such an accent is characterised by clarity of articulation, it's use in the context you quote was not determined by the limitations of contemporary microphones, etc. The essential point about it is that it's 'posh' - associated with the upper social class. Quite why it might nowadays be described as 'hilarious' perhaps requires an analysis of the deeply ambivalent British attitude to the upper classes which would go beyond the scope of this thread. ('Porcelain', I suppose, is what posh pots are made of ; most of us speak some form of earthenware.)

Senior Member

cut-glass
adjective [ before noun ]
uk UK /ˌkʌtˈɡlɑːs/ US /ˌkʌtˈɡlæs/
used about a way of speaking in which words are pronounced very clearly and carefully, in a way that is typical of someone from a high social class (Cambridge)

Senior Member

A gentleman’s agreement between British press barons and the Government had largely kept the relationship between Mrs Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII out of the papers, but the dam was about to burst.Using contemporary footage and newsreels (always hilarious because of the porcelain accents), and with access to letters and diaries, historians piece together (with the help of a wildly eccentric soundtrack that includes Kool and the Gang among others) the run up to a seismic constitutional crisis.